{"id":93415,"date":"2016-01-12T18:39:38","date_gmt":"2016-01-12T23:39:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=93415"},"modified":"2016-01-13T13:45:42","modified_gmt":"2016-01-13T18:45:42","slug":"enter-the-o","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/01\/12\/enter-the-o\/","title":{"rendered":"Enter the O"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"

Hiroki Tsukuda, 4466 Void<\/i>, 2015, black ink and charcoal on paper, 79″ x 53″.<\/p><\/div>\n

Hiroki Tsukuda\u2019s \u201cEnter the O<\/a>,\u201d the artist\u2019s first exhibition in the U.S., opens this Thursday, January 14, at Petzel Gallery<\/a>, in New York. Tsukuda, who lives in Tokyo, draws his inspiration from science fiction and video games; his works in ink and charcoal feature a welter of futurist architecture and industrial design.\u00a0His compositions are always dense with infrastructure, looping and jutting out at acute angles. It\u2019s as if some midcentury modernist utopia had been corroded by the needs of a burgeoning population, and eventually abandoned to the forces of nature.\u00a0Having been colorblind since he was a child, Tsukuda developed a sensitivity to shading and contrast\u2014reflected in the works on display here, which are\u00a0largely monochromatic. He said in a 2013\u00a0interview with Freunde von Freunden<\/a> that he aims\u00a0to create the sense of having escaped to an alternate reality:<\/p>\n

\n

I always had a strong desire to travel to another realm outside of this world, even from a young age. It\u2019s not that I hated reality and wanted to escape; it was more like I wanted to take a peek into the parallel universe that exists on the other side of this world. So when seeing a landscape or buildings, I always imagined that there was a spacecraft launching pad in the mountains or was convinced that the building was actually a secret research lab. A huge bridge 12,300 meters in length called\u00a0Seto-Ohashi<\/a> was built when I was a child, and I remember vividly seeing it close up for the first time. I was blown away by the unbelievable size of its concrete mass. For me, it was absolutely an ancient ruin from another universe. So I doodled a bunch of stuff like that as a kid, like a cross-section of a mountain and a facility underneath it …\u00a0I often choose motifs that are symbolically beautiful: beautiful landscapes, sculptures that are considered historically beautiful or sexy images that I find online. By transforming a part of this, a sense of awkwardness is created, as well as an indication or a sign, that broadly speaking creates a feeling of being abducted.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\u201cEnter the O\u201d is at Petzel Gallery through February 20. See more images below.\u00a0<\/em>
<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Entropy<\/i> (triptych), 2015, black ink and charcoal on paper, 160″ x 87″.<\/p><\/div>

\"\"<\/a>

Underworld<\/i>, 2015, black ink and charcoal on paper, 79″ x 102″.<\/p><\/div>

\"\"<\/a>

To the Depths<\/i> (diptych), 2015, black ink and charcoal on paper, 79″ x 102″.<\/p><\/div>

\"\"<\/a>

Stone Made Padlock<\/i>, 2015, black ink and charcoal on paper, 79″ x 53″.<\/p><\/div>

\"\"<\/a>

Dusk Comes<\/i>, 2015, black ink and charcoal on paper, 53″ x 53″.<\/p><\/div>

\"\"<\/a>

Untitled<\/i>, 2015, black ink and charcoal on paper, 17″ x 17″.<\/p><\/div><\/p>\n

\"HT<\/a><\/p>\n

\"HT<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Hooper<\/i>, 2016, mixed media, 19″ x 12″ x 14″.<\/p><\/div>\n

All photos courtesy of Petzel Gallery.<\/em><\/p>\n

Dan Piepenbring is the web editor of\u00a0<\/em>The Paris Review.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hiroki Tsukuda\u2019s \u201cEnter the O,\u201d the artist\u2019s first exhibition in the U.S., opens this Thursday, January 14, at Petzel Gallery, in New York. Tsukuda, who lives in Tokyo, draws his inspiration from science fiction and video games; his works in ink and charcoal feature a welter of futurist architecture and industrial design.\u00a0His compositions are always […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":38,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2384],"tags":[20758,35,216,12976,18073,20760,20756,1945,20757,20755,200,1947,494,20759],"class_list":["post-93415","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-look","tag-alternate-reality","tag-art","tag-design","tag-drawings","tag-dystopia","tag-gallery-openings","tag-hiroki-tsukuda","tag-japan","tag-japanese-art","tag-petzel-gallery","tag-science-fiction","tag-tokyo","tag-video-games","tag-work-on-paper"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nHiroki Tsukuda\u2019s \u201cEnter the O\u201d: A Haunting Alternate Reality<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The Japanese artist\u2019s drawings feature a grim welter of futuristic architecture and design.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/01\/12\/enter-the-o\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Enter the O by Dan Piepenbring\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"January 12, 2016 \u2013 Hiroki Tsukuda\u2019s \u201cEnter the O,\u201d the artist\u2019s first exhibition in the U.S., opens this Thursday, January 14, at Petzel Gallery, in New York. 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